General

Code Monkey - This may be your theme song

Mark H. Wagner — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 20:02:00 GMT

If your a software developer, computer programmer, software engineer, or even a code monkey; you now have a song written just for you. You'll enjoy Code Monkey by Jonathan Coulton. I encourage you to visite Jonathans web site and listen to it and other songs in his list.

Jonathan Coulton
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songs

Code Monkey:
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/music/thingaweek/CodeMonkey.mp3

How to send SMTP email using Telnet

Mark H. Wagner — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 11:08:00 GMT

How to send SMTP email using Telnet

This is an old method of sending email using Telnet. I've posted it here mostly for a remider to me on exactly how to do this, but thought I would share it with others who may not know of this. This can be useful when testing if a server can successfully send email. For example, I use this to confirm if a SharePoint server can successfully send emails for alerts and notifications.

The items in bold are what you should type.

Start a Telnet session from a command line by entering:
Telnet your.mailserver.com 25

220 a.mail.server.com Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.3790.2499 ready at Thu, 29 Jun 2006 15:59:02 -0600
helo

250 a.mail.server.com Hello [192.168.125.237]
mail from: fromemail@server.com

250 2.1.0 email@server.com...Sender OK
rcpt to: joe@server.com

250 2.1.5 joe@server.com
data

354 Start mail input; end with .
This is a test.
. (enter a dot/period to end the data)

250 2.6.0 Queued mail for delivery

quit
Connection to host lost.

Disabling Network Connection Balloons

Mark H. Wagner — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 11:21:00 GMT

I found the informational balloon tips that appear on my task bar to be very informative - initially, but become very annoying over time.

You can easily disable these network connection balloons in two ways.

The first and easiest is by disabling the Show icon in the notification area when connected option. To hide the icon and disable the newtork connection balloons, simply open your Network Connections, edit the properties for the network adapter you desire, and uncheck the Show icon in the notification area when connected option.

However, I personally like having the icons appear on the task bar, but the balloons have become very annoying. To allow your network icons to appear without the balloons, you can do the following.

These instructions are for Windows XP

Run the REGEDIT.EXE from the Start > Run dialog.
Locate the following registry folder:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
Create a DWORD value called "EnableBalloonTips". The default value will be zero. Leave the value as zero.
Reboot your computer for this change to take effect.

This will disable all balloon tips on your task bar.

Professional Grade Hosting starting at $4.95

Mark H. Wagner — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 08:29:00 GMT

I have been hosting at WebHost4Life how for about three years. I cannot say enough good things about this hosting service. Yes, this is something of a shameless advertisement - but it is the honest truth. If you are in the market for a new hosting service with professional grade products, you should try WebHost4Life. Here is an article I posted a while back that covers my experience with WebHost4Life.

Here are the reasons I find the WebHost4Life hosting service of great value:

Excellent self-service control panel. (I can do it myself)
Unlimited Bandwidth/Traffice (no monthly fee suprises)
Excellent support with very good response
and Professional grade products

Amazon.com Customer Service Telephone Number

Mark H. Wagner — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 08:52:00 GMT

What is the most difficult thing to find on the Internet? A telephone number.

Far to many companies are using their web site as a barrier to contacting a person directly.

I needed to contact Amazon Customer Service to resolve an issue. Finding their telephone number is an absolute chore and very frustrating, by design in my opinion. For those of you looking for the Amazon.com Customer Service telephone number, here it is.

Amazon.com Customer Service Telephone Number
1.800.201.7575

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Going underground

Mark H. Wagner — Thu, 12 May 2005 19:06:00 GMT

I tend to get quite a few emails via my blog so I thought I would post a quick note to say that I will not be able to respond to emails for the next three weeks.

WinFX: Guidelines and Best Practices

Mark H. Wagner — Wed, 04 May 2005 10:22:00 GMT

The WinFX SDK Community Technology Preview Edition has some very good content. I recommend the reading the WinFX: Guidelines and Best Practices

http://winfx.msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_fxguidance/html/2995cebf-2b57-4cdb-8cac-0e171fb7b0b7.asp

SoftPro: Books, Books, and more Technical Books

Mark H. Wagner — Mon, 02 May 2005 13:55:00 GMT

SoftPro bookstore

For those of you who live in the Denver, Colorado area there is an excellent bookstore that specializes in only technical books. There selection is excellent and they almost always have what I am looking for - in stock. If you want it now and don’t like paying for overnight shipping, I suggest you stop by their store just south of Denver.

http://www.softpro.com

BusinessWeek's blog: BlogSpotting.net

Mark H. Wagner — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 15:54:00 GMT

BusinessWeek is now trying to dip their toe into the blogging waters with their new blog site BlogSpotting.net. My initial 4-second impression is they intend to use it to sell online advertising more than anything else. My popup blocker was the first thing to fire. They also know how to stir up the publicity by picking a name that immediately begs an explanation – and they most certainly have provided their “oh no, not that” response.

What this does show is how the blogosphere has become big enough and influential enough across the globe to demand attention and participation from more a more major old-media based corporations.

Welcome to the 21 century BusinessWeek! Remember this; your competition will be much stronger and your subscribers will be more demanding and more critical about what you write.

Google does Maps

Mark H. Wagner — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:18:00 GMT

Google Maps - very nice!